Microsoft Unveils Telescope for the Masses

May 14, 2008 -- Four hundred years after Galileo Galilei first used a telescope to peer at the night sky, the largest software company in the world rolled out a powerful tool for exploring the universe that makes going outside obsolete.

The project, called WorldWide Telescope, is intended to become a virtual watering hole where professional and amateur astronomers, planetariums, teachers, science writers, students and especially children can create and share their cosmic wanderings with like-minded souls, interested participants and online communities.

Like Google Sky, WorldWide Telescope, developed by Microsoft Research, uses images from premier observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer infrared Space Telescope, to provide tours of the night sky to anyone with access to a computer and the Internet.

The Microsoft project, unveiled Tuesday, adds interactivity by allowing users to develop and share journeys, which can be enhanced with original content, such as music, weblinks and photographs to supplement the 12 terabytes of available online data. The data is displayed so that selected targets appear in their actual relative positions.

"Where is Saturn in relation to the moon? Does the Milky Way really have a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy? With the universe at your fingertips, you can discover the answers for yourself," said Curtis Wong, who headed the Microsoft group that created the software.